Strether in due course accompanied his friend to the room he had bespoken and had, before going out, scrupulously visited; where at the end of another half-hour he had no less discreetly left him.

On leaving him he repaired straight to his own room, but with the prompt effect of feeling the compass of that chamber resented by his condition.

There he enjoyed at once the first consequence of their reunion.

A place was too small for him after it that had seemed large enough before.

He had awaited it with something he would have been sorry, have been almost ashamed not to recognise as emotion, yet with a tacit assumption at the same time that emotion would in the event find itself relieved.